The stunning drawings were rediscovered in 1975. That’s when Paolo Dal Poggetto, then director of the Museum of the Medici Chapels, tasked restorer Sabino Giovannoni with trying to clean part of the walls of a narrow chamber beneath the church’s mausoleum, which had been designed by Michelangelo in 1520. - Artnet
"Emory University’s Michael C. Carlos Museum is quietly relinquishing ownership of five antiquities to Italy as it acknowledges, for the first time, that some of its pieces 'were looted and illegally exported.' The changes come after a Chronicle investigation." - The Chronicle Of Higher Education
"A retired French couple who sold an African mask to a secondhand goods dealer for €150 have gone to court for a share of the proceeds after the mask fetched €4.2m at auction. But campaigners insist that the rare artefact instead should be returned to Gabon." - The Guardian
Stonecarving is a centuries-old craft among the Shona people, and it thrived until the start of this century, when the violent turmoil caused by Robert Mugabe's government kept tourists and foreign collectors from traveling to Zimbabwe. But sculptors are hanging on somehow. - The World
"The story of the Bubon bronzes, though, is more than just a tale of looters’ remorse, investigative zeal, art market intrigue and antiquities repatriation. It’s also a lesson in history, one that presents a more nuanced view of ancient Rome than that popularized by Hollywood epics." - The New York Times
After a long and initially contentious process, a panel has selected a winner from the five finalist designs for a Tubman memorial to be installed near City Hall. (The mayor is one of many who think that the best option won.) - MSN (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
"About a dozen protesters of 'Dernière Rénovation' (Final Renovation) threw balloons filled with paint on the iconic glass-and-metal structure, while another scaled it and doused it with paint." In this case (unusually), they had specific, actionable demands to make of the government. - RTÉ (Ireland)
That comic, which has gone on to be the most reprinted in the magazine’s history, proves so enduringly popular that it recently sold at auction for a whopping $175,000, the highest price for a single cartoon on record. - Artnet
“I would love it if someone published a paper about one of the three paintings confirming or refuting my findings, so we could start a high level academic discussion about this." - The Guardian
"Sometimes it involves millions of dollars. It could be the plot for a series on Netflix. They falsify the certificates, even using real notary seals and use typewriters with ink from the fraudulent time of certification to recreate them." - El País
In early October, an injured barred owl was found in the National Gallery's iconic Typewriter Eraser, Scale X, by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. - Washington Post
"It took Zagar nine years to complete the 7,000-square-foot mosaic in the 1990s that defined his eclectic style. But today, after five years of fighting to save it, preservationists only have weeks to salvage as many one-of-a-kind tiles as they can." - Hyperallergic
"Practised for centuries in the twin-island nation of Antigua and Barbuda, ... seed work began among enslaved African women forcibly brought to the islands" - and there are less than a handful of artists working now. - The Guardian (UK)
